


The Case of the Occulting Binary

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Sideshows Triumphant [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Accidental Dimension Travel, Earth-3, Gen, Mirror Universe, Mirror Universe Crossover, Ra's al Ghul collects people, Tim Drake is Red Robin, Tim Drake is a Talon, in any universe, like the rest of this series, mirror talia is so much fun to work with you don't even know, not actually a mystery story, sorry - Freeform, the inevitable metaphors about birds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 07:59:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: “Timothy,” a voice is saying, and he has flipped into motion, over the back of whatever sofa-shaped furnishing he was lying on and onto the floor behind it, before he has managed to get his sense of sight online.Heknows that voice.





	The Case of the Occulting Binary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [artificiallifecreator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificiallifecreator/gifts).



> Here's schmoo92's consolation fic for me utterly misunderstanding what was called-for on the commissioned prompt and writing the wrong thing! Pulled from my archives and rewritten somewhat.

“I assure you, my young friend,” says a very dry, elderly voice—Pennyworth, he thinks at first, but it is not; the accent is not truly British, the voice is deeper, and more smug, and far less sad. “That you will regret any attempt at violence.”

He has never woken to the sound of Ra’s al Ghul before.

He lets his eyes fly open even as he jolts upright, long practice and his physical enhancements allowing him to ignore the lurch and pounding in his head at the abrupt displacement of blood. The sheaths at his wrists are empty, but he is unrestrained. Unsurprising. That, at least, is according to form.

Al Ghul regards him calmly from across a small darkwood table, laid with a tea service for two. There is something dark and hungry in his eyes that Talon has never seen there, even at the height of the old schemer’s avarice. “Cream?”

* * *

“Timothy,” a voice is saying, and he has flipped into motion, over the back of whatever sofa-shaped furnishing he was lying on and onto the floor behind it, before he has managed to get his sense of sight online.

He _knows that voice_.

His head feels like it’s splitting open, partly because of the abominable brightness of whatever (large) room this is, and he’s running in his socks across an elaborate parquet floor. Pattern unfamiliar. He identifies the nearest doorway more by general shape than anything, corrects course toward it and nearly hits the floor as his feet slide on the mirror-polished hardwood.

(Note for the future: alter design of uniform socks to still be comfortable, moisture-wicking, blister-preventing, and also _not slippery._ In case of future cases of boot theft in uncarpeted mansion.)

A blurred figure lunges at him, backlit by the general brightness; Tim ducks under the grab, fast, skids stocking-foot to the edge of the parquet, and flings himself through the door, rolling across the carpet he finds there and snapping to his feet in a smaller, darker room, where he can see even _less_.

There’s another attacker, through the gloom, and he lashes out with a palm-strike, followed by a kick, and spins away, blinking the water and blaze-dazzle from his eyes as he tries to identify— _third_ attacker, and Tim spins an elbow deep into their diaphragm and hears a retching as he darts away, making for another door that might lead to an escape route, at least enough of one to buy him time to figure out _what the hell is going on._

He forces down his own round of nausea as he slams through the door, into a room that’s finally illuminated to a reasonable degree. Throws his hands up in a hasty guard against an attack he feels coming from the left—a split second too late—

Tim sees clearly again just in time to watch Talia al Ghul deliver a contemptuous upward blow with the heel of her hand straight into his chin, before fireworks explode in his skull and he almost loses his hold on consciousness entirely.

By the time he can convince his eyes to open, he’s been dragged back across the carpet and the parquet by the back of his neck, and is being dumped roughly onto what turns out to be an elegant brocade divan, which he’s fairly sure is the thing he woke up on in the first place. Squinting, he determines that they are in some sort of arboretum, glass-walled and lined in potted plants. Hence the glare.

“Really, Talia,” Ra’s scolds, with less of his usual superior edge than he generally uses even when he’s trying to be ingratiating. Tim grimaces inwardly and forces himself to sit upright and stone-faced. Villains changing their patterns is never good news. “There’s no need for this brutality.”

Talia lets out a huff, and drops into a delicate wrought-iron brocade-cushioned chair that seems to be the twin of the one her father occupies. There’s a matching table between them and Tim, which is nice as far as it goes. “ _You_ may prefer to coddle the beast,” she says. “But _I_ am inclined to hold him to account.”

She reaches out to the round glass surface of the table, seizes some kind of roll, and bites into it—not quite with the total lack of table manners Dick or, for that matter, Damian would use if they were punctuating a bad mood with biting into food, but with a lot more carelessly expressive motion than Tim has ever seen from her before, either.

Even if they’re arguing, this is _much_ better than Ra’s and Talia were getting along last he knew, and assuming he gets out of this alive, he’ll have to alert Batman posthaste. Apparently the Demon’s Heads have come to an accord after all. And apparently Talia blames Red Robin for something. Wonderful.

At least it seems that if Ra’s is holding a grudge Tim’s little infiltration gambit, he’s being subtle about it.

Ra’s makes a noncommittal humming noise, and then turns to Tim and says, “Pirozhki?”

Tim manages not to ask _what?_

“The ones on this platter are filled with mushroom and cheese,” the nigh-immortal mastermind elaborates, gesturing to the plate Talia’s bun came from, “and these are egg and onion. And _these_ contain a sort of stewed apple filling. I am afraid we have no meat.”

 _Pirozhki_ is Russian for ‘little pie,’ and refers (with all the inscrutable illogic of natural language) to a type of filled bun. Tim has never actually had any. Ra’s is not Russian. _Talia_ is not Russian. Nyssa Raatko was, probably, originally, on her mother’s side—a Russian Jew—and the al Ghuls have always had cosmopolitan affectations, but…he abandons the line of thought as unproductive.

“No, thank you,” he says, and is pleased to hear his voice come out quite steady, and only moderately hoarse.

Ra’s arches one eyebrow at him, for long enough to grow unsettling. “And would that be,” he ponders, “because you do not trust me not to drug you, or because that concussion of yours has left your stomach rather touchy?”

“Concussion?” Talia repeats, raising _both_ eyebrows and setting the rest of her mushroom-and-cheese pirozhka aside on a small, ridiculously delicate china plate. (There’s one in front of Tim, too. It has painted roses. _Why._ )

Does she actually think she could have stunned him with one palm-strike if he _weren’t_ concussed? Tim is definitely insulted.

He’s remembering, now—he chased a lead on Bruce’s whereabouts from Limousin to Brussels to Beirut, and just as he reached the potentially useful artifact, he’d come into conflict with a team of ninjas who also, apparently, wanted it. He’d suspected immediately they’d come from Ra’s, but they hadn’t been inclined to chat. He could have handled them—but the artifact had, in the struggle, been damaged. There was a blast, and…

“I could not help but observe,” Ra’s remarks with a studied sort of disinterest, “the scar on the side of your neck.”

Tim only just manages not to raise his hand to it defensively. “What about it?” he retorts, as coolly as possible.

There’s nothing special about that scar. He got creased by a bullet during a shoot-out, one of a million times he’s come within millimeters of death and been saved less by skill than luck. It wasn’t quite wide enough to be worth stitching, and he managed to pass the bandage off to his father as a shaving wound. (Which, in his hearty, belated attempts to be an involved father, Jack Drake had responded to with promises of shaving lessons. Since Tim had been fifteen at the time and not actually shaving anything more than, very occasionally, the outside corners of his upper lip, it was just as well they never actually gotten around to these.)

It only scarred because something nasty got into the cut when he was down in the sewers tracking down Killer Croc a week later, and it stayed infected for most of a month. Too large to glue and too small to suture is the most annoying size for a non-disabling injury.

“It exists,” says Ra’s mildly, sliding his eyes along the scar he can’t possibly see from that distance. “As does the concussion. Which indicates that there has been, hm, some disruption in your life, Timothy.”

Tim is guilty of at least three seconds of staring blankly. “That is some profoundly incisive analysis of the available evidence, Ra’s,” he says at last.

Sardonic. Cutting. And Ra’s al Ghul very nearly _laughs._

Talia actually _does_ , a low, breathy, disbelieving chuckle, the kind that when Steph does it at meals tend to result in small showers of crumbs. Talia avoids crumbsplosion, but the smile left on her lips after she swallows is uncanny. “You’re boring your guests again, Father,” she says.

“Am I really?”

Ra’s is looking at him again. Tim elects to deflect by serving himself a mushroom and cheese pirozhka. “Not at all,” he demurs. He has no intention of eating what he’s put on his plate.

The waste of food is the least of his worries. Ra’s al Ghul is _smiling warmly at him_.

* * *

“…and so,” al Ghul concludes, eyes glittering like faceted onyx, “I am increasingly convinced you are not the Timothy Jackson Drake Wayne native to this dimension.”

Tim declined the tea. Nonverbally, as a sign of his extreme displeasure; al Ghul always makes such a production of drawing him into conversations and coaxing reactions out of him that silence is the most extreme rejection possible. The sting seems to have been less sharply felt this time.

No wonder, perhaps, considering the tale he’s just been spun. Timothy Jackson Drake _Wayne_ probably does not have the same history with the Demon’s Head.

Though Tim suspects he has one of some sort. Possibly a much more personal one than the Talon has ever indulged.

Pouring for himself, with a narrow amusement, the old man pointed out that he could have administered whatever drugs he liked while Tim was unconscious, but Talon knows that al Ghul (the al Ghul he knows) is the type of twisty thinker who is very aware of the _lack_ of power represented by having to resort to force. Especially with someone he has taken a personal interest in.

It implies, after all, that he is unable to get his way by any other means.

(It would also sit better with the old man’s _conscience_ to trick someone into accepting a substance into their body, than to take advantage of their helplessness to introduce it, although Tim knows that there are others who would equally squeamishly prefer the latter, as the former to them would seem a betrayal of trust, but the latter merely making the best of opportunity. Morality is such a peculiarly arbitrary thing.)

But he said nothing, waiting for al Ghul to get over the tea, and Tim’s conscious decision to not utilize his manners, and get to the point.

The point, it now appears, being something entirely different then he expected.

So now, he breaks his silence. “Wayne?” he repeats. Raising one eyebrow a hair. Since he has been deprived of his mask, he may as well take advantage.

“Yes,” al Ghul affirms, with all the easy unconcern of a snake which has wrapped its coils around the prey and has only to begin squeezing. He is not pretending very hard not to be watching Tim for reactions. “Bruce—are you familiar with him?—legally adopted our Timothy some time ago.”

Tim takes several moments—the Demon’s Head allows him them—to weigh once more the possibilities flowing from this assertion of alternate universes, all the slight details thus far that fail to align with his expectations, everything he has deduced about the man across the table from him in the last several minutes, if one imagines that his preexisting knowledge of Ra’s al Ghul should be taken only as a very rough guideline. And makes a decision.

He sits forward a little, arching both eyebrows in polite disbelief, and steeples his hands. “And he is still _alive?_ ”

A bladelike smile appears on al Ghul’s face, and he knows he has chosen correctly. “Ah,” the old man says. Knowing. Infinitely smug. “In point of fact, there is some dispute on that subject, but the young Detective is quite adamant that his mentor is living, and in need of rescue.”

A faint edge of irritation that he does not quite mean to show appears on these words last, and Tim lets his eyebrows curve higher. “Detective,” he echoes, rather than _rescue,_ tasting the possibilities of the title, letting his tone fall a little into that purr of intrigue that is so popular in certain circles. Miss Kyle particularly loved using it, and Bruce always seemed more motivated to impress her when she did. And there is already more of it in al Ghul’s voice, in this place and time, than he has ever heard there before.

He’s detected a pattern. Tim thinks he knows exactly what this man wants him to be. How fortunate that it is something very easy.

The old man looks pleased, once again, while affecting a look of grave disappointment. “I have extended my most considerate efforts to bring him into my fold, but he is rather fixed on his vocation.”

“Perhaps,” Talon suggests, with all the tonelessness at his disposal, “my other self is not a sheep.”

No more is he.

Al Ghul smiles, a little, the bladelike look that comes out only when he admits they are fencing with words, and not having a civil discussion at all. Tim has always preferred that look to the one of grandfatherly indulgence. “A fair argument,” he grants. “To roost in my mews then, perhaps.”

Tim lets his lips curl up at the edges. “Ah. But you must offer a falcon something, if you wish it to tolerate your jesses, and come back to the glove.”

Even Bruce knows that, though it seems to have taken some learning.

A small nod, awarding him the point. Some of the same ploys still in use, then. “Let me make you an offer,” the old man proposes. “For as long as you are here.”

“I’ll hear your proposal,” Tim allows. It is more than he has ever conceded before, but…he believes the ridiculous story, provisionally. This is not the man he knows. And he is not asking for trust, or that Tim give up being Talon in exchange for anything at all. He _is_ playing games, and Tim hasn’t been here long enough to know all the moves, or any of the pieces.

But if it is true that he has left the Owlman and his Court behind in another dimension…then his needs with regard to the old ghoul have changed dramatically.

**Author's Note:**

> Mwahaha finally some Talon!Tim pov, and we still don’t know his deal! :} 
> 
> Though we have learned more about how he thinks.
> 
> If I was going to continue this there’d be a lot of drama on the DC Comics side with Ra’s getting Talon to make a big show of working for Ra’s now, mainly to fuck with Dick, and on the Cirque side Tim continuing to be justifiably paranoid but also getting increasingly anxious to return to his own dimension because Bruce needs rescuing, a motivation that the al Ghuls find challenging to be invested in even though they understand in theory that he’s from a mirror universe, where they’re bad guys and Bruce Wayne is not a psychopath.
> 
> But I am not doing that because 1) I am already in wip hell and 2) it would get harder and harder and more and more bullshit to continue concealing Tim’s deal over an extended narrative.


End file.
